This Video Exhibit Offers Stark, Intimate Portraits of Queer Refugees

Their stories are more violent than expected. The queer refugees that testify in Carlos Motta’s new exhibition, The Crossing, at the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam through January 21 hail from countries like Morocco, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan, and Syria — places where homosexuality isn’t just frowned upon, but maligned, attacked, maimed, and obliviated.

The eleven videos from Motta’s series are sparse but effective, intimate portraits of queer refugees who often endure a path of extreme violence on the way to asylum in Holland. These small confessionals illuminate the harrowing experiences of LGBTQ+ migrants with unfussy ease. Motta allows each sitter to control their own narrative, exposing the specific brutalities launched against queer refugees in the midst of seeking asylum.

The accounts that come into relief stun. There’s Anwar from Egypt. After police jailed him on charges of homosexuality, they incarcerated him with death row inmates. Routinely, guards would come into Anwar’s jail cell while he was sleeping to step on his head or beat him. Following a short stint in Kuwait, he sought asylum in Holland after reading online about its permissive culture.

There’s also Mashid from Iran. Due to family pressure, she had reluctantly agreed to marry a man who quickly became abusive. She began an affair with her best friend, but when her conservative younger brother caught wind of it, he threatened to cut off her head the next time he saw her. She soon departed for Turkey, then from Turkey to Greece, and from Greece to Holland.

A transgender woman living in Iraq, Rameen desperately fled Baghdad after learning the horrible fate of her trans friend. This friend was tortured and murdered by the police in heinous ways. They superglued her friend’s anus shut and force-fed her until she literally burst. Like Mashid, Rameen set sail for Greece. She paid smugglers her life-savings to voyage across the tumultuous Aegean Sea, arriving just beyond Europe’s shores in a sinking boat.

Drama surrounding the West’s every-growing migrant crisis typically focuses on the European hosts, with little attention paid to the queer refugees who get lost in the shuffle. We forget the unique plight of this “minority within a minority” — this queer diaspora. Motta’s exhibition succeeds because it doesn’t aim to simplify or glorify their stories. The narrative is enough; their stories are enough to jolt any viewer out of complacency. His videos bare plainly the complexities of being a queer Muslim on the run, fearful of persecution by one’s own government, countrymen, friends, and family.

But Motta is also interested in the aftermath of migration. What happens to queer refugees once they come to Holland? To gain asylum, refugees must hand themselves over to the police, who transfer them to Ter Apel for registration. Because queer refugees face homophobia and transphobia from their peers in the general migrant camps, many are sent to live in the women’s camp in Aalphen ann der Rijn, a former prison staffed by former prison guards. Living in quarters specifically for LGBTQ+ migrants, there is some respite from the threats and abuses of other refugees. Here the stories from The Crossing begin to intertwine. Anwar from Egypt rooms with Zizi from Iraq, who fled Baghdad with dreams of becoming a belly dancer. The two men fall into each other’s arms crying. There is recognition of a common struggle between them, and because of this, they form a familial bond.

Gert Jan van Rooij

But relief never lasts long, and the refugee camp at Aalphen ann der Rijn is full of intimidation and humiliation for queer refugees. After a member of the queer community attempted suicide, Zizi staged a hunger strike. Another refugee, Butterfly from Syria, was denied hormones in Aalphen ann der Rijn because she did not yet have a residency permit. (Once out of the camp, she was forced to buy hormones illegally, pawning her cellphone to cover the costs.)

Advertisement

“I am afraid of Islamophobia and racism” says Mala from Morocco. “It’s everywhere.” There is a clear tension for LGBTQ+ refugees in Holland between a love for their foster country and a desire to expose its shortcomings. More than being queer, these refugees feel alienated from Dutch society because of their skin color and migrant status. Within the refugee camps, queer people are often treated with suspicion and borderline contempt. Faysal from Pakistan fled his home country after his boyfriend was outed and murdered by his own family in a so-called “honor killing.” But when he arrived in the Netherlands, an immigration officer denied his request for asylum, saying that Faysal didn’t “look gay.” What does gay look like? Faysal and his lawyer appealed the decision, but again was confronted with the same prejudice. “You don’t seem gay,” said the officer.

Faysal’s experience with the Dutch authorities is not unique. After a 2011 EU directive made persecution for sexual orientation and gender identity valid grounds for asylum, Europe experienced a dramatic increase in refugee applications. A report from 2011 showed approximately 200 people seeking asylum in the Netherlands on such grounds. In nearby Belgium, the estimate of LGBTQ+ asylum applicants nearly tripled between 2009 and 2014. With the relatively recent rise of ISIS in the Middle East, one can imagine that those numbers have jumped substantially in recent years. And if it’s this difficult to gain asylum in the Netherlands — the first country to legalize gay marriage — one can only imagine the difficulty of a refugee’s bid in other Western countries.

What underwrites the assumptions and cultural slights of Dutch immigration officials? In partnership with the Stedelijk, Motta has assembled a handful of artifacts, prints, and paintings from the Dutch country’s colonial past to legitimize the migrants’ observations. Despite its reputation as a liberal bastion of acceptance, the Netherlands is rich in a history of colonization and subjugation. (Let’s not forget, this is the country where Santa Claus has a black slave named Zwarte Piet). The items on display suggest that there is still some reluctance ingrained in Dutch hospitality: arms wide-open but with a hesitant, suspicious hug.

To their credit, the Dutch art world does seem engaged with the country’s past. There is a sincere attempt to address the accusations of Holland’s cultural minorities. A few blocks east of the Stedelijk, the Queer Migrant Film Festival played a selection of LGBTQ+-focused features that prompted discussions about how Dutch society (and Western society at large) addresses queer people from the Global South. The festival’s opening concluded with a party at the gritty punk-political bar Vrankrijk, which hosts weekly queer nights.

Here again, I was reminded of the queer refugees I had come to know in The Crossing. The first person to take the stage was a man. As Arabic instrumental music played, he began to shake his hips. Seductively, he inverted his tank top into a brassiere. As the audience cheered, he delivered an impromptu belly dance performance. Watching him twirl, tiptoe, and groove across the stage, I was reminded of Zizi’s testimony from Motta’s exhibition. Like this man onstage, Zizi had hoped to belly dance before a crowd. I wonder, did Zizi ever find his audience in Holland?

Departing from Amsterdam, I remained mentally stuck on Motta’s exhibition. As I headed toward the train station, I felt the stories of his subjects follow me: a jarring concoction of horrors to mull over while crossing Amsterdam’s happy, holiday-festooned canals. I come back to this concept of queer diaspora. How can we protect those most at-risk in the queer community? How do we steward them to safety and provide a sense of community and belonging? The Crossing feels like the logical first step: we must bear witness to their stories. What comes next is much harder: broader institutional recognition for what LGBTQ+ refugees face when they must flee from their countries and, ultimately, political and social reforms that enable them to find new homes that truly welcome them.

Advertisement

Gert Jan van Rooij

Zachary Small is a writer currently based between New York and London. Previous features, essays, and reviews have appeared in The Financial Times, Artforum, Art in America, Artsy, BOMB Magazine, and Hyperallergic among others.

them, a next-generation community platform, chronicles and celebrates the stories, people and voices that are emerging and inspiring all of us, ranging in topics from pop culture and style to politics and news, all through the lens of today’s LGBTQ community.